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Gegania
“Watch yer step, anvee. Them crags go deep and sometimes the crytters hole up in down-ere. Ent no way to get yer foot out without Equal magic, and I don’t foretell them using a dispensation just for yer foot.” * Jarim Esseck, Anvil and Second Fist of Fort Lhasal in the Salted Sands Mining Outpost Seven suns have circled the Ever Constant Peak since Alnas the Ordained heard the Elder’s call in the Salted Sands. Seven tedious, drought stricken years dripped away as the Equals waited for her return - waited for the words of their faith to guide their steps. Alnas has not returned, and every day hope of her return grows dimmer. The people of Gegania bake in the sun, listlessly waiting for their leader to bring back instructions from their gods, three generations silent, in their hunt for the All-Forge. Their leaders fiddle with fragments of Forged artifacts looking for an answer; their outriders redouble their fortifications to keep dark wilds at at bay; their citizens mire in aimless tasks, checking and rechecking masonry or tidying a never-used shelf. But the air crackles with electric tension. The Houses of the Equals show cracks in their stoic facades - hints of the desperate fear and naked ambition that guides their affairs. Storms press across the desert expanse with fire in their clouds. Some say a seer has foretold Alnas’s return; other rumors tell of the Scaled Beasts rising again far to the west and some Gegans clamor to meet them in war. There is no telling what other portents might be lurking just beyond the veil of civilization but one thing is clear: The stagnation of the Gegans is ending - - and barely in time. The Titans of old war amongst themselves in the maelstrom to the west, and their battles creep ever nearer the shore. ________________________________________________________________________________ The Gegans have been settled between the Sea of Restless Storms and the world to their east unknown for at least a millennia. History has a funny way of becoming folklore has a funny way of becoming legend becoming myth. Ask a thousand Gegans their history and how they came to settle at the fork of the Elder Peaks, and you might well get a thousand and ten different answers. They are a devout people, worshipping the seven Maker Gods. Artifice and smithy are everywhere in Gegan culture and lore: fire was not discovered but invented when Solnas the Runesman showed the first Gegans where to find flint. Magic is not the whispering of eldritch secrets to bring about some mystic truth in reality; it is the forging of will and the world. No proud Gegan mage would ever leave his pouch of carefully cultivated spell components far from reach. Strength, ingenuity, and the honor of hard-work done well are bedrock values to the Gegan people. Their environment is a harsh one: The capital, Deep Blue Gelga, rests on the verge of the Salted Sands, a vast desert covered in crystalline pillars and dunes of equal sand and salt composition. The Elder Peaks are massive but barren mountain slopes that provide mild refuge from the massive storms of fire, lightning, wind, and ice that rip shoreward from the Restless Sea. Opposite the other fork of the Elder Peaks is Zhangool Dead - a forest of withered and dying swamp and trees that has languished for as long as the Gegans can remember. __________________________________________ Gegania - Land of the giants' children. * Gegania is a country full of makers - smiths, builders, crafters; Gegans do not limit their craft or pursuits to only those which they can forge with their hands, but this mentality is pervasive in every facet of their society and culture. ** In their myths, the secret of fire is worked out by their legendary progenitor, Solnas the Runesman, after he merely observes the Gods using flint. Magic is primarily cast through the use of alchemical ingredients - they *make* the effects they wish to see. * Politically, Gegania is ruled by the Seven Houses of the Equals. ** The Houses take their charter from myth. Solnas left his kingdom to his six children and brother equally so long as they swore to pass their shares down equally among their own issue, each child having honed a skill to be worthy of the stamping into the runed bricks of history. ** Each Gegan, upon achieving an apprenticeship, is honored with a Runemark bearing the sigil of the House associated with the craft of their choosing. That House is thereafter bound to them, and they to it. Very rarely do Gegans change their Runemarks to another House. Never is a Gegan left Houseless. ** In practice, the Houses are an oligarchcal aristrocracy who have subdivided the various tasks of governance and administration among themselves, enforcing these boundaries as a means to pursue any number of political schemes. * For centuries the Eye of Eternity, a maelstrom off the western coast of the Gegan continent, has represented both the harsh realities of the natural world and the opportunities for innovation and creation its secrets harbor. ** The Eye spits off huge, sweeping storms full of winds and rains as well as destructive pyroclasms or warping voids or crackling surges. ** As the storms sweep eastward through the deserts and slowly dissipate through the Gegan landscape, huge deposits of Stormsalt are left behind. ** Much of the Gegan economy revolves around the mining, research, and trade of Stormsalt. Stormsalt is a hugely desired mineral, as its qualities as an arcane element are understood on only a base level. *** Recently, various discoveries about Stormsalt have enable much more powerful magics to be cast, but those spells come through using Runemarks of Stormsalt as arcane foci. These require special authority from the Houses to wield. ** 50 years ago, the Eye of Eternity doubled in size, and monstrous creatures began to belch forth into the landscape. Wreathed in fire or sparking lightning with every step, these creatures are alternatively pensive and searching or bent on destruction. Some rumors suggest that the Elemental Planes themselves are at war, and that they fight for the right to plunder Gegania herself. * A recent treaty between the Damosthai and Gegania has produced a golden age of exploration, innovation, and industry, as well as allowed the Gegans to push back against the incursions from the Eye of Eternity. * Expect goliaths, dwarves, hill gnomes, and humans to be most numerous among the Geganians, but no Gegan would ever turn away a friend whose broad shoulders or clever insights could help create something truly worthy of their Runes.